


We Are One

by Inrainbowz



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, M/M, Mind Control, Powerful Charles Xavier, Telepathy, There Are No Limit to Charles Powers, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 07:25:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14744490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inrainbowz/pseuds/Inrainbowz
Summary: Charles and Erik are facing each other in the ruins of the White House. Charles makes a different choice. The story takes a different turn.He won’t let anyone put their kind in danger again, destroy their future. No one. Not ever.





	We Are One

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Nous sommes Un](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2951588) by [InrainbowzZ (Inrainbowz)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inrainbowz/pseuds/InrainbowzZ). 



> This is a translation from French of my own fanfiction, written about... holy shit four years ago. It takes place during and after Days of Future Past and it's not happy. At all. I tagged the ship cause it's basically canon in my mind haha, but it's not really there now that I think about it. I really like stories about dubious moralities and tough choices for the greater good, as well as characters going all out for their goal. So. Here we go. Enjoy!

_Someone is coming._

**_Oh?_ **

_I wonder if it is instinct, or if my range keeps growing. Research once lead us to believe that mutant powers tended to stabilize with age, but our students' progress proves that wrong every day._

**_And yours too. Who’s coming then?_ **

_I don’t know. We’ll see._

 

Charles was working in his office when screams and rumors of a fight echoed from the hall. Setting down his pen, he moved away from the desk and left the room calmly, searching for the nature of the threat in the mind of his students and professors. Harmless, he already knew.

Raven was trying to get through a crowd of young mutants adamant on stopping her. Brave, but naïve of them. They did know who she was and what she was capable of.

“Charles! Show yourself you traitor! CHARLES!”

“Stop fucking screaming!” Logan howled, pissed off by all this agitation. Charles sent them all reassurance and calm and told them to let her through. Raven passed Logan in the stairs without a glance. He didn’t try to stop her, just followed closely.

She went straight to Charles, as he expected. He had long stopped feeling any guilt at entering others’ mind, even of those close to him. There were too many enemies and threats to lose sleep over such trivial dilemmas, and to be honest, he did it without thinking.

_Hello Raven._

He had never been able to call her Mystique.

**_She seems enraged._ **

_I guess she finally found out._

 

Mystique grabbed the professor by the collar of his shirt, almost lifting him from his chair. Logan took a step forward, but the man held him back with a side-glance. Logan obeyed, as always. He stayed on his guard though.

“Tell me it’s a lie, Charles. I looked everywhere, for all these years. Tell me it's not true.”

She was shaking him violently, eyes filled with tears, under the shocked looks of the school inhabitants. Charles didn’t do anything to stop her or defend himself. He just bore her gaze, unmoved. She finally grew stilled, exhausted.

“Where is he? Where’s Erik? Please, please, just tell me,” she begged, voice weak, broken. Most of their audience didn’t even know what she was talking about, but Logan had often wondered too. Since his “return”, he had never once heard about the other mutant, not in any stories he had been told. The Brotherhood was still very real but in this timeline, it had been Mystiques’ from the beginning, and even if she was good, she hadn’t brought it to Magneto’s level of nuisance.

Logan hadn’t ask. An intuition. Don’t ask questions you don't want to hear the answer to.

Charles turned back toward his office, expecting to be followed. Mystique did, Logan on her heels, and when he spotted Hank coming from another wing of the building, he gestured at him to come too.

_You know what is happening?_ Jean asked while trying to calm down the students in the corridors.

_No, but I’ll let you know. Have the children go to class, you can give mine to Scott._

_Okay._ He could hear the smile in her voice.

 

“So, Magneto?” Logan asked after several minutes of tense silence when it became clear no one was going to break it. Hank looked as lost as he was – even after all these years he still lost his composure around that woman. Mystique was glaring at Charles, and Charles was staring off into space, lost in his own thoughts, seemingly unconcerned.

“I could never find any trace of him, despite all my efforts,” Mystique said, eyes focused on the professor. “But I guess you knew that, right? You must have covered it yourself. What did you do? Tell me!”

They held eye contact for a while before all fight seemed to leave her. She fell to her knees in front of the telepath and put her hands on his thighs, rested her forehead on his knees.

“Charles… where is he? Where? »

He looked incredibly old, and as young as when Logan had first met him. Lost, and sad, as he had never been since then.

“Did you… did you kill him Charles ?”

 

_If only._

**_Don’t say that._ **

 

“Charles!”

Mystique was glaring at him as he sat there, unblinking, unmoving, still a statue. She was simply looking at him and Charles couldn’t turn his gaze away. She had always been able to read his thoughts, without needing any telepathy.

What had tipped her off now, decades later? Why come looking for answers to questions that had stopped being asked? He supposed it was only fair – he was bound to face this, one day.

“I couldn’t let him leave, Raven. I did what I had to do, even if I regretted it every day since.”

“You… Oh hell, you really killed him?”

“No.”

_No, not killed, Raven. Worse. Far worse._

“So what? What did you…”

And Raven, his sweet, sweet Raven, so dear to him, Raven opened her eyes wide in horror and took several steps back as if he had hit her. She couldn’t move, nor talk. He bore his gaze, accepting her repulsion, her hate, as a price for his crimes.

She had caught on almost immediately, because she knew him. Deeply, intimately, knew what he was capable of, even years after the last time they had been anything close to siblings to one another.

“You couldn’t… you didn’t…”

By the time she recovered, Logan and Hank were ready for her to attack, even if they didn’t understand what was happening. They took her by the arms, on each, and slammed her into the wall, struggling to restrain her as she trashed and raged.

“Monster, monster!” she kept repeating, and how right she was, he thought bitterly.

She sent her feet flying into Beast’s nose who groaned in pain. He was distracted enough that she could turn her arm almost to the breaking point to get free. She was too fast for Logan to avoid her hand to his throat. He fell to the ground, windpipes crushed, as she jumped Charles. The telepath noticed too late what she was holding.

She slammed the telepathic bridge into his temple with such force the chair almost tipped off.

"Show them, Charles," she hissed, cold and hateful. She was holding his head so hard it felt like she might crush his skull. “Show them.”

The bridge opened through his mind, and the room and its occupants plunged directly into the maze of his memories.

 

//

 

_An advantage of being paraplegic is not caring about a metal beam crushing my legs._

Charles can’t move. He’s in the mind of Raven, of the president, of the men in dark suits, of Bolivar Trask. He sees their thoughts flying in front of his eyes, on the grey sky blocked by this gigantic beam.

Erik is once again out for his physical integrity.

He begs Raven. He begs her with all his heart, he begs the determined young mutant, he begs his little sister. He tries not to think about what will happen if she persists, about seeing the terrible future he saw in Logan’s mind coming true.

Over his dead body.

She’s still balancing between two paths and he sees the future balancing with her, still intangible, still unknown. He tells her everything is in her hands and he wonders if she knows it’s not true, that even if he wants to trust her, he’s still ready to stop her if she hints at making the wrong decision. He won’t let her, won’t let anyone put their kind in danger again, destroy their future.   

No one. Not ever.

Raven lowers the gun.

He’s so sick of crying.

           

 

He rushes towards Erik’s mind as soon as she sets it free of this ridiculous helmet. He handles him like a puppet to move that fucking beam, lets Hank get him up, and comes face to face with his friend.

“If you let them have me, you may as well kill me,” Erik says calmly. There is no doubt in his mind that Charles is going to let him go. He has this easy smile, this disinterested expression, like he isn’t even concerned by the events, because he has no doubt.

Charles never hated him as much as he does now, but they both now that he is indeed going to let him go.

He is.

 

It’s this instant, this moment that changes everything, where the story takes a slightly different turn. The future still swaying on its hinges stops abruptly, sets down for good.

 

He can’t let go of him.

He can’t. He saw Erik in Logan’s future. He saw him trying to force mutation on the world, trying to push mutant supremacy to the price of both human and mutant lives, saw him kill _children_.

Children. The children they swore to help and protect, children exactly like the ones they grieved not so long ago.

 

_I can’t let you go._

**_Release me, Charles._ **

_No. I can’t._

**_Charles?_ **

_I won’t let anyone put our owns in danger, destroy our future._

**_CHARLES!_ **

 

 

Hank and Charles are arguing about Erik. Again.

“You shouldn’t have kept him from the start!” Hank exclaims for the hundredth time. His voice and jerky movements betray his agitation, the pent-up anger and worry he has no outlet for.

“I know Hank. I know that…” Charles sighs, defeated. “I don’t know what came over me, okay? And I don’t know what to do now. I can’t just set him free. He’ll be furious, he’ll come after the school.”

“Waiting is only making it worse! We can’t just keep him there forever!”

Just as the words tumble out of his mouth, the mood suddenly gets heavier. They stare at each other, horrified by the idea that just crossed their mind, by the future hanging in that simple sentence. Charles tries to laugh it off. The strangled sound that tears out of his throat makes them both jump.

“No, of course not,” Charles answers after a too long pause, waiting for Hank to nod along. The young man looks at his old mentor like he’s seeing him for the first time. Nothing comes.

 

 

_Hello, Erik._

**_Charles._ **

_How are you?_

**_How can you ask me that?_ **

_I don’t know. I don’t know what to say._

**_I’d rather you didn’t say anything. Since I’m doomed to be your prisoner, at least spare me the burden of your presence._ **

_I’m sorry, Erik. I don’t have a choice, I…_

**_I’m not the one you need to justify yourself to, Charles. You are. You’re right, I’ll kill you, you and all the people you ever cared about, if I ever get free of your grip. Does that excuse what you’re putting us through?_ **

_I don’t have a choice._

**_That’s not true._ **

****

 

No one understands why Charles is so weak sometimes. Why he locks himself up in his room and refuses to talk to anyone. Why in the middle of a conversation, a class or a meal, his face abruptly twists in an expression of agony, why he grips his hair and grits his teeth, what brings him such pain. He looks a hundred years older than he is in those moments.

They don’t know why, and they never will.

Erik screams and rages, struggles again and again. He keeps hitting the walls of his and Charles' mind, relentless. The young telepath is now constantly plagued with a maddening storm ponding at his skull, violent and tenacious like he didn’t think it was possible. He often has to keep the bed all day, unable to do anything other than reinforcing the mental barriers that keep Erik imprisoned deep inside of himself. On those days, Hank can’t break his fever and begs him to let go of the other mutant before it kills them both. But Charles is too scared of this storm, of this terrifying rage, endless and wild, and of what it would do if he ever falters.

So he doesn’t.

Slowly, as time passes like it’s bound to do, the walls solidify, crystallize, settle in the mental landscape the two men now share. Charles manages to dissociate that constant fight from the rest of his mind, to confine it to a corner that only bothers him with persistent migraines.

After a while, even those start to fade.

An entire year has passed. Oh, how he despises himself.

 

 

**_Please, Charles, please, I’m begging you…_ **

_Stop it, Erik, just stop._

**_Let me go. I can’t take it anymore, and neither can you. Set us free. Why are you doing this?_ **

_You know why. I can’t. I don’t trust you. There is no way out for us Erik, there never were._

**_I won’t do anything. I’ll disappear, I swear. Just let me go and you’ll never hear of me again._ **

_I don’t believe you. You’ll never be at peace Erik, and you say that now, but I know you, as well as I know myself, if not more. I did what I had to do to protect our people, to protect them from you, and I won’t go back on that._

**_Why not kill me then? Do I deserve this fate, are my crimes so atrocious that you would torture me like that? Do you wish to punish me until the end of my days? Or are you just too much of a coward to put an end to this?_ **

_I am guilty of that, among many things. I can’t kill you. I’ll never be able to._

**_I hate you._ **

_I know._

 

 

He hates how easy it became.

When they came back from Washington, he had to make a conscious, constant and tremendous effort to keep Erik under control. The man slipped from his grasp sometimes when he was tired or unfocused, and he heard him scream in both their minds, insult him, threaten him, constantly.

Beg him too, after a while.

But it’s easy now. He doesn’t even think about it that much anymore. Worst, he forgets sometimes. He takes care of his students, his teachers and his schools, he looks tirelessly for mutants to rescue, and hours pass without Erik even crossing his mind.

There is an annex on the school ground, far away from the mansion, deep into the woods. A few bedrooms their occupants never leave, a kitchen, a common room that is never used. There, they house mutants whose gift bare them from ever having a normal life among their peers. There is a woman whose senses are wildly enhanced, and she gauged her own eyes out before she was brought there. There is a boy who exists at several points in time at once and who is unable to tell them apart. And in a room at the end of the corridor, that no one ever feels the need to check out, or even notices, there is a mutant whose thoughts and freedom are no longer his own. Haven’t been for a long time.

Charles doesn’t need to go to the annex to tend to Erik’s body. From his office he can have him eat, sleep, wash, like the most morbid game of life. He barely thinks about it. They do those things together. Charles has more and more difficulties dissociating their thoughts – sometimes they mix and mingle, he doesn’t know who thinks what, who does what.

Slowly, the limits between their mind fade away.

 

 

Hank comes at him yet again. Charles has a terrible headache after a training session with Jean, and he doesn’t have the strength to fight once more. He doesn’t question it anymore. Erik won’t ever forgive him, there is no way to prevent him from unleashing his rage on him and his school if he ever frees him. He stopped looking for a solution to their situation. There is none.

It’s been five years.

He could wipe his memory, as Hank has suggested many times. He could manipulate his memories so that he doesn’t remember any of this, his captivity, even before that. But it’s too dangerous a process. That’s what he’s been telling Hank all these years, that the memory is too unstable, too complex, for him to be sure it would work.

Charles is a hypocrite and a liar.

“Hank. I don’t trust myself not to leave a lead, something that would bring Erik back to himself, and to me.”

Hank stops in his diatribe, caught off guard.

“What?”

“I’m so sorry Hank. I never told you, but I wished at least as often as you that I was born without that curse.”

“What are you… Charles!”

Too late.

Wiping out such a long period of someone’s life would be hard, it’s true. Hard, but not impossible, and this is much easier. Just twisting one of his friend’s memories, just make it that Erik left Washington, alone and free, and messing with their interactions on the matter, that isn’t hard at all.

“Was there something you wanted to tell me, Hank?” Charles asks the man, because he is a man now, strong and steady and always willing to help Charles, to shoulder a part of his burden. Too bad Charles never truly let him. Hank blinks, confused.

“I… No, nothing but… Charles? Is everything alright?”

“It’s nothing, don’t worry,” Charles answers with a smile, wiping the tears crowding his eyes. “I’m just tired. I think I’ll go lie down for a bit.”

“Alright. See you later then.”

He hates, hates himself.

 

 

**_You deserve it._ **

_I know, Erik._

**_…Let’s play, Charles._ **

_What?_

**_Let’s play. There is always a game of chess lying around here. I’m losing my mind in all senses of the term in your prison. Let’s play. There is nothing else we can do._ **

_…_

**_Charles?_ **

_I’ll take black._

Everything softens with time. Everything smoothes over until nothing sticks out anymore, nothing hurt. No matter the intensity of their passion and the violence of their conflicts, the years pass and it all fades away.

Erik doesn’t protest anymore. He’s passive and quiet like never before, like Charles never thought it would happen. But his mind takes up more and more room by his own. It’s been fifteen years and he’s sure now that he wouldn’t be able to separate them and free his old friend, even if he wanted to. Erik is just another voice in his head now, as haughty and disdainful as it was when they first met, but with none of the passion that consumed him when they were young. Things come and go in this timeline, some looking like the events Charles got a glimpse of in Logan’s mind all those years ago, some wildly different. It’s quiet and peaceful, compared to what others lived, in a different world. Without the Sentinels, without Magneto, and with a head start on major events, they prevent the things that could have threatened their existence.

It makes him sick to think of the price they had to pay to get there.

 

 

Logan finds his way back to the school. He doesn’t remember a thing, from this life nor the other, and his body is heavy with adamantium. One day he’ll remember, and Charles will have to answer his questions.

**_Don’t worry, he won’t ask after me._ **

Charles is ready to face the consequences of his actions and choices, eventually. The body has left the annex, transferred to a private clinic to be put on life support. Charles isn’t sure Erik would cease to exist if that body died.

**_I can’t go back to it. I don’t feel it anymore._ **

 

 

The body is buried far away from the school, in a no-name town the next state over. The grave bears only a name. Charles didn’t know what date to put for the death, and Erik kept telling him he didn’t want any epithet or ornament.

Here there are, standing above this grave, where lays a body long obsolete, alienated.

_I suppose this proves the transfer of conscience is possible. Does it mean I may never die?_

**_I hope you’ll take me with you._ **

 

//

 

The telepathic bridge exploded, making a mess of the room. The four adults were back in Charles’s office. Hank and Logan were too stunned to do anything. Mystic was still clutching her brother’s face, and in another life, it would have been tender, affectionate.

“You’re a monster Charles.” Oh, how the tables have turned.

“Charles, you…”

“Charles?”

He closed his eyes a few seconds, a moment to be sorry, to regret. When he opened them, the situation was once again under his control.

“Sleep.”

He heard the short-lived protests of his friends in their mind as they slipped away. They fought it briefly, to no avail, before dropping.

Charles was alone once more.

**_Not really alone, old friend. Never alone._ **

_They’ll wake up without any memory of this. They will think I put them out to keep them from fighting._

**_What will you tell Raven?_ **

_The truth. That you died years ago, I don’t know of what, and that I had you buried in secret. That I kept paying my respect from time to time. I’ll point her to the grave so that she can do it too._

**_The truth, huh? Charles, is there no limit to your powers? If things can be as you wish them to in their mind, if you can bend anyone to your will, where is the limit?_ **

_You’re thirty years too late to wonder, Erik._

**Author's Note:**

> Well. That was fun. Let me know what you think, bye!


End file.
